teaching

As Academic Senate President, I had the honor of speaking to over 500 graduates at Santa Barbara City College on Friday, May 23, 2014. The following are the words I shared.

On behalf of the Santa Barbara City College faculty, I welcome you. Welcome to our faculty, our staff, our administrators, our board of trustees. Welcome to parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Welcome to partners, husbands, wives, and children. Welcome to our friends. Welcome to our ancestors who can’t be here in physical form, to our spiritual ancestors who have taught us how to live well, to our cultural teachers who have reminded us how to treat each other, and to the land ancestors who have cared for and settled on these lands in the time before us.

No one of us does anything alone.

Each person present here today is a part of one another in this moment of celebration. Please take a moment to remember all those people and conditions that have happened to bring us to this moment in time.

We are all present here today as a community. We are all present here today to honor our 2014 SBCC graduates.

This dharma talk is the second part of a four-part series on mindful breathing given by Kenley Neufeld at Lulu Bandha in Ojai, California. Original date is September 29, 2013.

Our text is from the Anapanasati Sutta translated from the Pali by the Venerable Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. The English title is the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing. The term “sutra” is Sanskrit and is more common in the Mahayana tradition and better known in the west.

This dharma talk is the first part of a four-part series on mindful breathing given by Kenley Neufeld at Lulu Bandha in Ojai, California. Original date is September 22, 2013.

Our text is from the Anapanasati Sutta translated from the Pali by the Venerable Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. The English title is the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing. The term “sutra” is Sanskrit and is more common in the Mahayana tradition and better known in the west.

In this dharma talk, we focus on the the Four Preliminary Exercises:

Breathing in a long breath, I know I am breathing in a long breath. Breathing out a long breath, I know I am breathing out a long breath.

Breathing in a short breath, I know I am breathing in a short breath. Breathing out a short breath, I know I am breathing out a short breath.

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The location was the hidden valley of Deer Park Monastery near San Diego, California. This 500-acre sanctuary provided the space for about 60 dharma teachers to meet for five days in early June. The weather was perfect, the sharing intimate, the facilitation exceptional, and the practice grounded. The dharma teachers came from Theravada, Ekayana, Mahayana, Vajrayana, and Triratna streams bringing a richness of experience to our gathering and conversation. Though the gathering was located at Deer Park Monastery, this gathering was organized and facilitated by a team of five dharma teachers from each of these lineages. Much gratitude to the monastics of Deer Park for opening up their home for our practice.

As active dharma teachers in a tradition of Buddhadharma offering refuge in the Three Jewels, we gathered as a continuation of a similar retreat at the Garrison Institute in 2011. We came together to share our experience, and support each other, as young dharma teachers (born between 1960-1980) teaching western Buddhism. The intent was to connect teachers for whom Dharma teaching is a (or the) significant life activity, whether through teaching retreats, guiding a Buddhist temple, or other format. Being together demonstrated that we are truly a community of teachers and not independent nor separate because of our tradition. We need not teach in isolation and can support one another in our practice and teachings. (more…)

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You might assume I was in my element at a conference dealing with mindfulness and technology – you assumed correctly! It was a blast to sit and use my iPad and iPhone during this mindfulness conference in Mountain View just a stones throw from Google. The Wisdom 2.0 Youth conference is an offshoot of the previously held Wisdom 2.0 conference. The subtitle for the conference was How Do We Raise Children in a Hyper-Connected World? For Parents, Educators, Teachers, and Concerned Citizens. The lineup of speakers included folks from Google, Twitter, and leaders from the mindfulness in education field, all skillfully put together by Soren Gordhamer.

I’ve been to many conferences – mostly technology and/or library related. I have also been to many retreats and led mindfulness activities – mostly Buddhist in nature. This conference was unique for me because it dealt with mindfulness from a purely secular perspective and aligns itself very easily with the applied ethics theme/effort that Thich Nhat Hanh has been exploring the past couple of years. Though I arrived a little uncertain, because of my experience as a practitioner and educator, I was not disappointed with the presentations and panels. I now have a better understanding of what has occurred in bringing mindfulness into schools and what challenges these leaders experienced.

What follows are my notes and thoughts from a handful of the presentations.

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Suffering and happiness are inseparable. We all have both and they both come and go throughout our lives – at least up to this point in my life. Our practice of Mindfulness is an effort to transform our suffering into happiness. It is an effort to move in the direction of joy. It is an effort to move in the direction of being truly present and to be present for our families, our friends, and our community. In doing so, we can alleviate a great deal of suffering for those around us, and to cause less suffering in the future. We can make the world a beautiful place in the present moment.

In the very first talk given by the Buddha, he outlines this foundational concept. The First Noble Truth says there is suffering, ill-being. The Second is about the cause of our suffering, and the Third Noble Truth talks of the cessation of suffering. This is the presence of happiness. We can learn how to produce happiness. We have many practices for this transformation, but I especially am drawn to the two foundational practices of meditation of “stopping” and “looking deeply.”

We can do this. Just a few short hours of practice and we can begin to train our mind. It’s quite simple to discover happiness in the present moment and to transform our relationships.

We have been offered mindful breathing exercises. The first is following our breath – mere recognition. This can be done anytime, anywhere. We can use sounds and images from the world around to remind us to return to our breathing. For example, I have a computer application that invites me to stop every 70-minutes. But it could be the telephone, a red light, a child’s laughter. We stop and come back to our breathing. This is stopping. It can be practiced anytime, anywhere. I love this practice. I begin my training with sitting meditation, but it doesn’t have to stop on the cushion. Learn to discover methods to following our breath. When we feel anger, frustration, or despair, returning to our breath can immediately bring us relief. Try it – it’s true!

The next steps outlined for mindful breathing is awareness of our body and releasing tension. Learning to calm our body. Where is our body? We can do this when we are standing, walking, sitting, and lying down – and know that we are doing each. My emotions often come through strongly in my body. How does my body feel? How does my body behaves? In touching this we can bring relieve. In recognizing the body, we see the connection between body and mind. This is especially true when we practice sitting meditation – we should see the unity of body and mind. For some, walking meditation works much better than just sitting.

If we can practice these first few exercises, then we can also nourish joy, happiness and learn to explore our feelings. Maybe we try something like this:

It is a simple practice, silly even, but it can bring a lot of transformation. There are people who have no peace and joy because they cannot stop their thinking. We can also practice joy by bringing awareness to those parts of our body we may not always remember – our eyes, our heart, our liver. Breathing in, I know know I have two good eyes. Breathing out, I feel joy.

Happiness goes a little further. The story often given is that of a person in the desert who sees an oasis. She is joyful upon discovering the oasis and she is happy when she takes a drink from the water.

Here I have outlined just the first six exercises of mindful breathing. These exercises of mindful breathing can bring about personal transformation, but it can provide the foundation to bring transformation to our relationships – relationships with our parents, our children, our consumption.

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As a community college librarian, I’ve often experienced that it’s just go, go, go from day one of the semester. We do what we know because it’s easy and less time intensive. Finding space for experimentation doesn’t always appear. Then, every once a while, something comes along where we can stop and consider the possibility. I’m at one of those moments thanks to a colleague at Santa Barbara City College.

Consider the possibility of framing critical thinking and 21st century literacy within the framework of blogging. It’s not really a new idea, nor a very innovative idea, but today I was afforded the opportunity to see what it might be like. I was invited to an English class, one level below college English, that has been using blogging this semester to share their writing. The professor asked me to come to the class and use blogs to open a discussion on critical thinking. There wasn’t really a “research” component to the visit, just more of a discussion. I was invited because we were recently talking about blogging and I had shared some recent research on the topic (see Beyond Peer Reviewed Articles)

The class was fun. It was interactive. It was informative. It was relaxed. It was engaging. And I’d love to do it again.

I’ve taught social media independently of my librarian role, and have definitely included elements from the social media landscape within the framework of my traditional library instruction sessions. This English class felt different. This felt richer. This felt more appropriate to student learning. We can all see the content landscape shifting and students need these skills to understand, think, and navigate effectively. Faculty need to embrace it.

This was my first time with this format, and I only prepared a most basic framework (links) for the discussion. I’d like to do this again with other classes. So much valuable content is provided using blogging foundations – even from traditional media sources. How can students capitalize on this content? How can faculty learn to embrace this content as appropriate for learning?

First the “ouch” from the library gang. The realization that not enough assessment of our social services has taken place in the library environment. There has been anecdotal success but nothing concrete has been reported. In the past several years I’ve simply thrown stuff up to see what stuck and seemed a functional service. It’s worked reasonably well but as a Library Director I see a greater need for assessment. Assessment is Goal #1 in the coming year.

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Today I had the privilege to speak with 40 high school and community college librarians about building a social library. The event took place at the Powell Library at UCLA at the invitation of Esther Grassian.

Though I created a Keynote Presentation (below) and demonstrated how one could use drop.io with groups, the majority of the presentation just came from the 75-minute conversation. All the relevant links are at the bottom of the post.